Post-Debate Potpourri, Part Two

Most of this week, I’ve been speaking in the Dominican Republic, where AiG had some wonderful outreach opportunities. During the week, Mark Looy—who set up my recent debate with TV’s Bill Nye “the Science Guy”—has been collecting various intriguing tidbits about the event, which has been watched now by at least 10 million people on the web (either through the live web stream on February 4, or later on debatelive.org or our YouTube channel). Mark compiled so many items about the debate that I am devoting two days of blogs. Today is part two of his debate report.

Post-Debate Answers

First, Ken, I encourage your blog readers to watch you and Dr. Georgia Purdom in the video you produced the day after the debate as you dealt with many of Mr. Nye’s claims at debatelive.org/answers.

AiG Support Across the U.S.

I read a comment recently from a debate pundit (and we’ve heard it before) that our ministry support comes mostly from the so-called “Bible belt” states of the south, as if the rest of America rejects our view of Genesis. I just received a report of the states that show the greatest interest in our resources—the top sales by state are as follows:

Florida

Indiana

Pennsylvania

Ohio

New York

California

Virginia

Illinois

Texas

Washington

Michigan

Only two of them, Virginia and Texas, might be considered Bible belt states. Florida is not commonly considered among the states in this category.

Debate Question Cards

Before the debate started, question cards were passed out to the attendees to fill out. The moderator (Tom Foreman of CNN, who did an excellent job) then posed several of the questions to Mr. Nye and you. Some of the more bizarre queries included, “Why does your museum constantly depict Adam and Eve as being white?” Actually, the museum doesn’t, as this photo shows—the museum consistently depicts Adam and Eve as middle brown.

Here are some question cards that were filled out.

“There Is a Book”

It appears that the catch phrase of the debate is, “Bill, there is a Book.” As has now been well reported, when it was your turn to comment on Mr. Nye’s “great mystery” statements, you replied, “Bill, . . . there is a Book . . .” I recall that one of the times you said “there is a Book” occurred as you replied to one of Mr. Nye’s answers—to an audience questioner—where he admitted that there were some great mysteries still to be discovered (including the origin of consciousness). “There is a Book” has become a popular phrase. It was even used by Pastor Jeff Davenport at Calvary Baptist Church in northern Kentucky last Sunday as the title of his message. Here is the sign in front of his church that announced his sermon title:

Meanwhile, the following is in front of a church near the Creation Museum, which essentially declared its non-support of the museum’s stand on a literal Genesis—arguing that the method of how God created is not important.

(By the way, the only way we know “who” is by taking Genesis 1:1 literally: “In the beginning God created . . .”)

MSNBC Reveals a Bias

After his debate with you, Ken, and inside the very museum you founded, Mr. Nye was asked by MSNBC TV to offer a post-debate analysis. MSNBC, which set up a satellite truck behind the museum (and we assisted them in setting up), interviewed Mr. Nye inside one of the museum’s exhibits, with our permission, of course. The rudeness of MSNBC in refusing to include you in the debate analysis—in an interview in your museum—was what I would call chutzpah. (The producer said there was only time to interview one of the two debaters.) It only helped to reveal MSNBC's ongoing bias and unfairness towards biblical Christianity. It was a rude, unprofessional move by any standard. Realize, too, that the name of the program is The Last Word—but you, Ken, never got a word in to begin with!

Inundated with Advice

I wrote to you yesterday that before the debate over 150 people had contacted you to offer you their advice in the debate with Mr. Nye. We appreciated this overwhelming expression of support. However, the reality is that if you accepted every bit of advice that was sent to you, and if you looked at every submitted article, photo, PowerPoint slide show, illustration, video, etc., then your debate statement—including all the arguments you were presented with—could have been 12 hours long! Some people, though well-intentioned, presented outdated or discredited arguments (e.g., the moon-dust argument for the age of the solar system, Paluxy dinosaur prints, etc.).

Responding to Mr. Nye’s Facebook Challenge

One item here is about something that happened after the debate. Earlier this week, Mr. Nye issued you a challenge on his Facebook page:

I would challenge him to build a real ark. Instead of trying to fund an ark park, Ken, why not build a real one and take it to sea for a full year? And Ken, if you’re too busy with your flock there in Petersburg, KY, have your most competent parishioners take a shot. Send 8 of your toughest, smartest people to, say, Norfolk, have them design and build a 500 foot wooden boat, load it up with 17,000 pretty good-sized animals, and show us how straightforward it would be to have it remain seaworthy for a year. They have to gather all the food needed locally before they set sail, of course. It’s one more thought experiment that would illustrate how unbelievable the literal story of Noah is, as translated into modern English. Also, we’d have to stipulate that all humans and animals come ashore alive . . .

For our web visitors who may not be aware of how you responded on Facebook to Mr. Nye’s challenge, I am putting it here:

Bill Nye, after our evolution/creation debate last week at the Creation Museum, publicly issued me a challenge today on his Facebook page.

Bill, during the debate last Tuesday, I asked you this question:

“How do you account for the laws of logic and laws of nature from a naturalistic worldview that excludes the existence of God?”

I challenge you, once again, to provide a rational basis for your worldview. You dodged the question in the debate, and you continue to do so. Until you answer that question, you have no reason to trust your inductions or the uniformity of nature and have no basis to tell us what is right and wrong. I trust those things because I know the God of the universe who created those laws and has promised to uphold them in a uniform way--which is consistent with His perfect character. Indeed, I have a reason for my reasoning.

The battle, as I said more than once in our debate, is not about the evidence. (And it seems even a number of Christian naysayers about the debate still don’t get this vital point, either!)

And besides, Bill, you know this, as I even showed you a “single piece of evidence” of an out of place fossil (using the secularists’ own dating methods)—45,000-year-old wood in 45-million-year-old rock! You said one piece of evidence like this would change your mind—but you willingly ignored it.

Again, why is your assumption that science is possible apart from God reasonable?

Frankly, you are not a “reasonable man” because no reasonable man who claims to be consistent with reality rejects the truth of God’s Word. In fact, the Bible makes it clear in Romans chapter 1 that you know God exists, but you are suppressing that truth in what the Bible calls unrighteousness.

No “reasonable man” believes that reason, emotion, or morality evolved from the random interaction of chemicals over billions of years. Therefore, you have no foundation. You have a blind faith, one which causes you to borrow from the Christian worldview to even make sense of the world around you.

Bill, I urge you to use your God-given reason to respond to God’s Word, such as: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

Bill, Noah’s Ark was a real ship—and it is a picture of a real message of salvation from God’s judgment on man’s sin, including yours. (And the answers to your questions about the seaworthiness of the Ark and how it could have been built are on our website; also, AiG is not a church and so we don’t have “parishioners.”) Just as Noah and his family went through the door of the Ark to be saved, we need to go through the door of our Ark of Salvation.

Jesus Christ said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (John 10:9).

Bill, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, I implore you to be reconciled to God. As I pray for you, please stop shaking your fist at Jesus and place your trust in Him. —Ken

Background to the Debate

Here is some background to the debate that you might find interesting. First, we had to remind our 150 pre-debate inquirers to recall that the agreed-upon-debate topic was "Is Creation a Viable Model of Origins in Today's Modern Era?” By agreement, it was not to be an anti-evolution debate like those famous debates in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, it was one that was supposed to defend Genesis—it was to be a positive message we wanted to proclaim. The debate was to present a positive case for creation and also to demonstrate that a scientist can be a creationist (e.g., MRI scanner inventor Dr. Raymond Damadian). Even though it was not an anti-evolution debate, you still managed to expose many problems with evolution.

The debate topic came out of Mr. Nye's insistence to the media over the past two years that a belief in creation—but not in evolution—is detrimental to science and technology. Mr. Nye likely would not have agreed to debate a different question, such as evolution’s validity. Thankfully, your research team spent dozens of hours of research in order to give you a strong idea of what Mr. Nye was going to present at the debate.

Going into the debate preparation, we knew that by taking something of a presuppositional approach to the evolution vs. creation question in the debate, some Christians might object, especially if they were familiar with the debate formats of decades ago. Those debates between creation and evolution apologists dealt almost exclusively with “evidences.” Nevertheless, as a Bible-upholding ministry, we wanted to use Scripture first and foremost in the debate, and use the sciences to confirm it. That is the heartbeat of this apologetics ministry, though it might not be for other creationist organizations (and, of course, that is their prerogative).

For your consideration, here is what I would call a good observation from a creationist with another apologetics group: “Ken reminded me of Stephen, in Acts chapter 7. Stephen soundly refuted his challengers’ false accusations, plus he perspicuously integrated the Gospel of Christ in the process of delivering the refutations. Of course, many armchair-debaters who don’t see the big picture will fail to appreciate how Ken followed the Acts chapter 7 approach to winning the real debate.”

Let’s all pray that the Word of God as was presented by you at the debate will not return void (Isaiah 55:11) in millions of hearts, and that the gospel message you proclaimed (twice in the debate) will resonate with people. When was the last time that over five million people at one time heard the gospel as you presented it live? And millions more have heard the gospel since that time by watching the debate as it is archived at debatelive.org or on our YouTube channel—or by watching TV accounts like ABC TV’s Nightline program.

Is There Really a God?

As the debate attendees left the auditorium that night, we passed out your witnessing booklet Is there really a God? Again, the most important message of the evening was the gospel, even more so than showing that creation is a viable model of origins and that science confirms it as such—and more so than demonstrating how wrong Mr. Nye is in his assertion that scientists who are creationists are not able to contribute to science and technology.

Debate Answers on AiG’s Website

Once again, we want to draw people’s attention to our debate answers page, which has links to articles rebutting virtually all of the statements/assertions brought up by Mr. Nye during the debate. That link will also lead people to the video you and Dr. Georgia Purdom produced the day after the debate, which deals with more of Mr. Nye’s claims.

Thank you, Mark, for two days of interesting reading about the debate.